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Eventup was suffering from a serious
inquiry overload. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based online
startup -- which rents out unique spaces for parties, such as
Eric Clapton's onetime home or the Malibu pad from The
Bachelor -- needed a more efficient way to handle
the hundreds of placement requests from venues, as well as
customer queries, that were overwhelming the 12-person staff
each day.

"Prior to our public launch, every venue we signed up was because
of tons of calls and was extremely painful," says Eventup founder
and CEO Tony Adam.

The company set out to automate as much of the painstaking
process as possible.

The fix
Adam invested in a custom-made site with back-end tools that
simplify the sign-up process. A "list your space" feature allows
venue owners to submit a form with photos and all necessary
information, such as size, capacity and parking options.
Realizing that venues are booked more often after clients walk
through them, Adam built a venue-visit scheduler into the system
as well. Party planners can bypass Eventup's staff and
communicate directly with potential venues via a secure messaging
system on the site. This spares employees from having to answer
questions such as, "Do you have a dinner table that seats 20?"
Eventup joins in only when it is time to book the location,
taking its 15 percent cut. Alternatively, customers can fill out
a simple form labeled "Tell us about your event," and Eventup can
contact multiple appropriate venue owners at once to solicit
bids.

The results
Eventup says its sales reps went from signing up five venues a
day to more than 20, and that within a month, revenue was 10
times greater. (It would not provide figures.) The company is
looking to expand to other markets, including Chicago."Now we're
able to put more care into our corporate customers and focus our
efforts where it makes the most sense," Adam says.

A second opinion
John Powell, CEO of Alfresco, a cloud-connected content
management platform, says that even though Eventup successfully
built its own automation process, a knowledge-management (KM)
solution could have saved time and headaches."A lot of their
questions can be stored in the KM system; answers can then be
automatically stripped out of e-mails so that, over time, the
common questions on venues can be answered more easily," he says,
noting that KM systems can also help standardize forms for venue
surveys, capturing blueprints and photos and then automatically
updating the database.

Overall, though, Powell is impressed. "Eventup's site is very
easy to navigate, and I really like the user interface," he says.
"Its technology also provides a much-needed service that I think
has currently been missing from the hospitality market."